


Go Home

by icaruswontmelt



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Attempted Murder, College Dropout, Cults, Demons, Existential Crisis, Explicit Language, F/F, Inspired by Night In the Woods, M/M, Mentioned Human Sacrifice, Mild Gore, There's A Cult Later, it's basically an au of that, not a very ship-filled fic, there's like, two couples and they aren't the focus
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-01
Updated: 2020-04-01
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:01:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23424412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icaruswontmelt/pseuds/icaruswontmelt
Summary: You failed.
Relationships: Gwaine & Arthur Pendragon (Merlin), Gwen/Morgana (Merlin), Lancelot & Arthur Pendragon (Merlin), Lancelot/Merlin (Merlin), Merlin & Arthur Pendragon (Merlin), they're a side couple though
Comments: 4
Kudos: 6





	Go Home

**Author's Note:**

> "Fuck the bus," He walked out of the light, "Fuck this station," He stepped off the pavement, "Fuck Camelot," He jumped over the ditch, "Fuck Camlann,"
> 
> He walked into the woods.

Arthur wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting when he arrived, but a locked bus station certainly wasn’t it. It wasn’t like he thought there’d be a massive banner saying “Welcome Back Arthur!!! :D”, but he’d never even considered that the place would be locked up for the night. Although he guessed there weren’t that many people coming off the bus here at 11pm. Or ever.

He huffed out a sigh and adjusted the strap of the duffle bag on his shoulder, squinting into the dark for any sign of headlights. Nothing. No one. Arthur pulled out his phone, and for a brief moment his screen lit up before going dark. Dead. 

“Fuck,”

If Morgana was coming to pick him up she’d have arrived at exactly 11:05, five minutes late just to piss Arthur off a little. If Gwen was coming to pick him up she’d have been here ten minutes early. It was 11:15. Nobody was coming.

_“Fuck,”_

Arthur pushed a hand through his hair, squeezing his eyes shut, _[Come on,_ think _you useless fuck,]_. The drive into town is like, ten minutes long so if he walked the road then...how long would that be? The speed limit on that road was 40 miles per hour, so that’d be what. About 7 miles? How long does it take to walk 7 miles?

Arthur gnawed his bottom lip and sat on the cold curb. When they were in middle school, he and Merlin had gone off into the woods by the park on the big hill. They’d laughed and said they were conquering new lands for their kingdom. Eventually they’d gotten out of the woods and found themselves here, in the bus station parking lot. It couldn’t have been more than half an hour’s walk, and they’d had tiny middle schooler legs then so who knows how fast Arthur could make the hike now.

So he could walk along a shitty country road until _maybe_ 1am, or he could walk through the woods in the middle of the night. His back ached from the bus seats, his backpack was heavy, the cold was making his nose run, the strap on his duffel bag was cutting into his shoulder through his thin jacket, and he was tired. Really fucking tired.

“You know what?” Arthur shoved off the curb, “Fuck it,” And he marched across the tiny parking lot towards the towering trees. 

“Fuck the _bus_ ,” He walked out of the light, “Fuck this _station_ ,” He stepped off the pavement, “Fuck _Camelot_ ,” He jumped over the ditch, “Fuck _Camlann_ ,”

He walked into the woods. 

He didn’t need this today. Or tomorrow. Or yesterday. Or last week. He just wanted...He didn’t know what. But he knew it was something better than this. So he stomped on leaves as he walked. Morgana would call him overdramatic. Morgana wasn’t here right now. The ground dropped down into a hill so steep it was nearly qualified to be a cliff. Arthur grabbed onto a small tree’s trunk, maybe a baby oak or aspen or something, and began descending. Every few steps he’d grab onto a new tree, shoes slipping in the loose dirt and leaves. When he was younger he pretended he was scaling a cliff whenever he went on hills like these. Climbing up and up to reach someone important locked away, or carefully sliding down, tree by tree into the enemy camp. The earth beneath his foot gave and he lost his grip on the tree -- he put his other foot in front to try and stop the fall but he started tilting forward so he put the next foot forward and shit it happened again and he was going forward forward _forward_ \--

“ _Shit oh shit shit shit shit ack shit shit fucking fuck shit_ ,” He fell-ran down the hill, trying to make sure he didn’t fall and bust open his head. He reached the bottom of the hill and let the forward motion push him to his hands and knees, gasping for air.

“Well that could’ve gone worse,” Arthur said to nobody in particular. He felt tears building up in his eyes,

“No, no, not going to break down in the woods, nope,” He roughly wiped his eyes dry with his sleeve. A thin film of dirt coated his palms and finger tips. There was probably dirt embedded in the knees of his jeans now too. The weight of his backpack pushed down on him. He stood up anyway.

“Okay, this is fine. It sucks but it’s fine,” Arthur released a shaky breath and began walking again. The trees seemed like giants, staring down at him in judgement. As if they knew his failures. As if they knew he was supposed to do more, be more than some small-town blonde wandering in the woods at night. He was supposed to go off to the city and go to college and get a fancy degree and a fancy job. 

“ _You’re better than this place._ ” Uther used to scoff, “ _You’re destined for greater things than a dead end job in a dead end town_ ,”

Oh, the irony of Uther telling Arthur to do better.

Something small darted through the shadows to Arthur’s right. _[Calm down, it’s probably a chipmunk or a squirrel. There aren’t fucking demons in the woods here,]_ and of course he had to think about demons because now his imagination was taking over. What could be hiding in these woods? What could be watching him? He rolled his shoulders and looked up to the night sky. If he didn’t look at the dark, it couldn’t look at him.

In Camlann there had been too much light pollution to see the stars. Now Arthur could see them twinkling through the bare branches above him. During one of his quiet-drunk days, Uther said Ygraine used to have a telescope. Arthur had stared out his window every night after that. He wasn’t sure why or when he’d stopped. Maybe he grew out of it. Maybe he noticed their flaws. They weren’t judgemental like the trees. Just too far away.

He tripped over a root. _[Focus on what’s in front of you, dumbass. It’s the woods, this isn’t exactly even ground,]_. The negative self-talk probably wasn’t helping his mental health. He was too tired to care right now. 

He thought he saw some lights ahead of him, streetlights. Finally! He adjusted his duffel bag and half-jogged forward until he could see the half-lit outline of the old playground. He smiled in relief, he was almost home. The playground was just like he remembered, down to the uncomfortably colored stain at the end of the slide. Kids weren’t technically allowed to play on it anymore, the equipment had gotten worn down and there was a bunch of wasp nests in the swing set. The town just didn’t have the budget to tear the whole thing down so they just put up some yellow tape and told all the parents to keep their kids away. Merlin had called it The Forbidden Temple and claimed the broken play equipment as his territory. Arthur ducked under the tape and almost laughed when he set foot on the sidewalk, he was really back now.

Suddenly, red and blue lights lit up the area around him. His smile dropped down into a scowl. He looked back and sure enough, there was a damn cop car coming up the hill. Of fucking course. The red and blue stopped flashing and the car pulled over, headlights making the playground cast long, long shadows that looked like a monster’s limbs. 

The cop stepped out of the car, “Good evening, Arthur. It’s been a while,”

_[Oh great, it’s this asshole.]_

“What are you doing out here? Run out of donuts?”

Agravaine’s mouth tightened, “I was doing my rounds and saw you leaving the extremely off-limits playground,”

“So?”

Agravaine sneered, “Get in the car, Arthur,”

“No,”

“Do you want to spend your first night back in jail?”

Arthur sighed, “No,”

Arriving at his sister’s doorstep dirty and smelling of the back of a police car wasn’t exactly the proudest moment of Arthur’s life. Agravaine’s smug attitude wasn’t helping. Arthur made sure to slam the car door extra hard before the officer drove off.

Which left Arthur alone, with barely 10 feet before his journey home would be complete.

Why was it so hard to take those steps forward?

_[What, you can wander through the woods at night but you’re scared of a three bed two bath with a couple of lesbians? What’s wrong with you?]_

Probably a lot of things. Arthur shook his head, as if tossing his head around would make the self-loathing and guilt and _embarrassment_ go flying out of his ears. But no shadowy thoughts fell onto the pavement to be illuminated by the warm light seeping through the thin curtains. There was no scary beast for him to fight, nothing he could hit or conquer to make his problems go away. There was no world where he was clean and comfortable in his dorm room, studying or doing homework or procrastinating. If there was, he wasn’t in it and he had to move on. 

This was his life and he had to own it — so he took a deep breath, walked up to the front door, and knocked. No backing out now, he did it. He was here. He’d knocked on the door and now it was opening and…

And Arthur could cry. Because Morgana was standing there in garishly colored polka dot pajamas and her hair looked like a bird was living in it, and she looked so incredibly shocked to see her little brother standing on her doorstep at midnight. It was so fucking funny and it felt like _home_.

“Arthur? What the hell are you doing here?”

Arthur swallowed the lump in his throat, “The bus was today,” He hoped the warble in his voice wasn’t too obvious.

“I…” Understanding dawned in her eyes, “Oh my god come inside, I’m so sorry I thought it was tomorrow,”

“It was today,” Arthur shrugged, trying to look nonchalant and totally fine as he shuffled into the house. 

Morgana closed the door, “How did you get here?”

“I walked,”

“You walked?!”

“Yeah,” He stared at his shoes and pushed the cloth of the welcome mat around. 

“Shit. I’m really, really sorry Arthur,”

Arthur shrugged again, “It’s fine. I think I’m going to go to bed,”

“Yeah, yeah, you do that,” Morgana awkwardly patted him on the shoulder as he went to the stairs, clearly lost in her own head, “Goodnight,”

“Night,”

Arthur’s room was the attic, and it was exactly as he’d left it when he’d first moved into the Camlann dorms. The shitty bean bag chair he’d bought at a garage sale sagged in the corner, a poster of some niche Rebel Punk Bad Boy Rock Band group he used to listen to hung on the wall. Arthur unceremoniously dumped his backpack and suitcase on the floor. He barely remembered to take off his shoes, jacket, and jeans before falling onto his old bed. It smelled like laundry detergent and dust. Sterile and unused. 

He pulled the sheets over him and tried to not think about anything. Arthur was really fucking tired. He didn’t want to dream.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you guys liked this! This first chapter might be a little bit OOC for Arthur but in my defense he's really pissed and upset and humiliated right now. My favorite way to write Arthur is to destroy the floor beneath him and make him learn how to deal with that. I promise the next chapters will have less swearing. Why aren't there more Night In The Woods AU's of Merlin?
> 
> Also as a person who grew up hiking through largely untamed woods with their family, all of Arthur's walk is 100% valid. LOOK WHERE YOU ARE WALKING. There are roots and rocks and shit all over the place, and make sure to lift your feet higher than normal when you walk! And those steep cliff-hills? They exist! And they are terrifying when you're tiny! They're terrifying when you're older but more clumsy! Use the trees, make sure the ground you're on his solid before you put your weight on it. This has been a PSA. The wasp-infested playground is also part of my world but after a couple years my old school eventually just tore down the equipment.
> 
> Anyway, thank you so much for reading this! It means the world to me that you've gotten this far, and I hope to write more soon. You are all loved and appreciated.


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